Hall outside the Slytherin House entrance
3pm

Sophie was not stalking. No, she was loitering there was a massively huge difference, though she could not think of them at that exact moment in time as she paced back and forth. The problem with Deus didn't really have a schedule. He showed up to classes, meals, basically everything in life when he was good and ready. Sometimes that meant camping out if one wanted to find him, sometimes this also meant looking desperate when you were desperately trying not to look desperate - or like you cared very much at all. She had had a lot of time to think about what Cassie said the previous weekend and it just felt silly to keep holding onto the trinkets in her chest like there was going to be some meaningful moment to gift them to the Slytherin. There wasn't, and it felt almost (but not really) unfaithful to have them just lying about or so much longer than she'd had Figaro's picked out.

It wasn't as though they were some preciously meaningful gifts. Cuff links he would probably never wear and a watch with a mustache - a reminder of a joke that probably only mattered to her anymore. It would be best to just give them to Deus and go back to being the dutiful happy girlfriend. She liked Figaro, he was loud and obnoxious...but he was also always where he said he would be. She never had to worry about him flirting with other girls or not feeling good enough because she wasn't a Slytherin Goddess. Fig liked who she was, or he seemed to. So Cassie was wrong, there were no feelings left over for Deus Deres at all and this was the absolute perfect time to prove it. She'd give him his stupid presents (she wasn't expecting anything in return), they'd have a laugh and then she could go about her day.

Only, as usual, the boy in question would not just show up like he was supposed to. She'd been pacing for an hour, but she knew the second she left he would turn up so she was just going to wait him out - even if it made her look a little crazy and the dungeon was not particularly warm. She had this, no big deal. Sophie just made things be a big deal in her brain because she thought faster than she could reason (this was probably also why she was terrible at Defense and Transfiguration). Raking her fingers through her hair she checked her wrist only to realize (sort of ironically) that she wasn't wearing a watch. The watch was in the box, the watch box. Chewing on her thumbnail she tried not to make a face as a group of snotty 5th year girls swished by, looking the Gryffindor over like she must have been out of her mind. Stupid Dues, couldn't he even let her give him Christmas presents early?!

If Deus were inclined to Muggle music tastes, Jesse's Girl might have been appropriate for the moment. But as it was, the Kelpie didn't even have a radio, and his tastes ran more to wheezy Scottish sea ballads and the occasional  Knockturnals album that got blasted in the common room.

She'd been there an hour. He knew this, because he'd left the common room and passed her in the hallways, and she had seemed so intent on whatever mission she was heading to that he hadn't spoken up, and seeing her still here left a queer sort of unpleasantness in his gut he didn't particularly care to examine.  So instead he just examined her, leaning against the shadowy wall of the dungeons as she paced, content to keep track of her slight form as it stormed back and forth, a tornado in a tiny package. At some point, he supposed, he ought to let her know he was here, because he was arrogant enough to assume he was, in fact, the reason for the restless movements. But that was hardly any fun, and to be entirely honest, while Deus was confident that she was here to see him, he wasn't sure why, and he knew just how much of a punch Miss Flickwick's personality could pack if it went the wrong way, and that cowardly bit of him that was just fine doing what he had to didn't much care for facing what he could avoid, if it were managable.

But while she looked annoyed, she didn't quite look like she was ready to breathe fire.

Yet.

That could change, he mused idly,  noting how Sophie only ever seemed to manage one emotion at a time, blazing full force through every inch of her, and which emotion it was tended to be a bit of a gamble, for all that the odds were easily figured once you'd been around her a bit.

When the fifth years slithered past, he decided he might as well get it over with.

Creaking a bit--he'd managed to turn part of his hip into wood, and had only just gotten it undone--he slipped behind the retreating robes to pop up, as always, behind the Gryffindor girl.  He restricted his contact to a hand brushing her lower back as he curled around her shoulder to put his head near hers. "If ye donnae ken where ye are going, any road will get ye there." His hand vanished and he was stepping around her to lean against the far wall, facing her with an expression of quiet amusement. "Are ye lost, love?"

As always he was just there, as if he'd plucked himself out of thin air to torment her when she looked most distraught. He couldn't even allow her the artifice of a carefully crafted and studied carelessness. Whether he meant to or not he always seemed to catch her at painfully earnest moments while offering no vulnerability of his own. Her heart skipped at little as his warm words blew past her ear, but she quickly scolded her body for being a traitor and simply squared her shoulders and tried to look...less like she had spent an hour waiting to give him a stupid package he probably wouldn't even like.

Gordic's garters! This whole thing was a rotten idea, she should not be standing there with him. What would Figaro think? He'd flipped out over Erin last Valentine's Day, made a huge big scene. She was just begging for trouble doing this at all, and Deus wouldn't even get the joke probably because he didn't care about things the way she did. At least, from what she could see he didn't care about her the way she had cared about him and now she was trapped! She had, quite possibly, the worst judgment of anyone in the history of the world...except maybe Death Eaters. Yeah, Death Eaters totally had worse judgment, but still, Sophie's was pretty terrible.

Clearing her throat she shook her head at him and rolled her eyes, "No, I'm not lost. I just..." she was going to start babbling if she wasn't careful, "I'm playing Santa early this year. I finished my Christmas shopping last weekend and since you are not an easy person to find I thought I should pick a good spot to camp out in the dungeon to be sure you got your present". Yeah, that didn't sound completely desperate and stupid. She completely sounded like she was over him and didn't care on more than a superficial friend level, yup. Holding up a nearly wrapped and stacked package of moderately small boxes she waited for him to take them, "Nothing special, just remind me of you," she really wished she hadn't added that last part.